UK YouTuber wants to inspire

Dan Pritchard shares his life through vlogging. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Dan Pritchard shares his life to help others get through theirs. He covers his travel, good times and bad times.

The Welsh vlogger posts a myriad of subjects.

“A little bit of everything,” he said. “Every time, it's so different. It's such a variety. I was focusing on traveling stuff for the longest time. Now, it's more day to day and when I travel, I'll record it. Obviously, I love doing the traveling stuff. It's definitely my favorite. But it's more day to day whenever I pick up the camera and it's trying every kind of niche and see what works out, see what performs best and just see what the people enjoy. I love doing the lifestyle, the travel. I run a lot, so I've been recording a lot of the running recently and let people from the outside see my life and get a perspective on my life and my friends and the people I'm surrounded by.”

Dan hopes his content brightens his followers’ day.

“A source of happiness, something to watch and enjoy,” he said. “Sometimes, they'll be sad and that's mostly because I want to help people. I want to help people be happy. I want to help people have an understanding of life. I want to motivate people. That's my only goal definitely.”

Dan continually thinks of new content to make.

“I try and revolve my life around content so anything, especially traveling,” he said. “Any day or anything we do, any fun stuff, it's like, okay, this has to be good for the blog. Whatever we're doing tomorrow, it has to be good for a blog, has to be good for a video, has to be entertaining.”

However, Dan won’t post a video if he isn’t satisfied with the result or there’s timing issues.

“I have a lot of videos that I've recorded and I'm like, you know what? I don't really like this, so I'm not gonna publish it,” he said. “I've had many videos like that. Sometimes, I'll record some stuff and it doesn't fit within the schedule. I'll do a trip and then I'm on another trip, and then it's too late. But I've gotten to the point now where I'll just put out whatever. If it does good, it does good. If people watch it, people watch it. And you learn every video. I learned from all the people I'm around and I definitely learned from how it performs and the comments and the feedback.”

Dan isn’t as worried about what not to post as much as keeping the content interesting.

“I want to make it feel creative,” he said. “Some vlogs, It'll be just very raw. When I was filming creatively, it was fun. I get to fly my drone, I get to do a really cool shot and I get to be proud of that shot. And in a year's time when I come back to look at that video, I mean, wow, that was really good. Whereas, if it's just the wrong real ones, I'm just talking. There's nothing that excites me. Let me set up my camera here. I want the audience to be like, wow, that was really cool. And wow, he's very creative.”

Despite being 16, Dan is already a veteran at vlogging.

“My first ever YouTube video independently, I think I was about 4 years old,” he said. “It's been 12 years now. My dad was filming me for YouTube. We had this very terrible — it's like an HP laptop — It was very old and I would livestream Minecraft to YouTube off that. And when I was a very young kid, 5 years old, and when I was 6, 7, 8 years old, all up to 10 years old, I was coming home from school and livestreaming Farming Simulator for three hours a day making YouTube videos. Then from 10 years old up, it was on and off with YouTube videos. But I have so much clips on my parents’ phone where I'd be like, it's Dan, welcome back to another YouTube video. And English isn't my first language, so my English back then was terrible, too. It was very funny just looking back.”

Dan was inspired to start recording by watching other people’s content.

“It was just watching other creators,” he said. “I always loved cameras also. My neighbor was a cameraman and he had a lot of cameras."

A second neighbor also donated gear. 

"So they ended up just giving me all their old cameras,” he said. “They would give me a lot of gear and I would use those and always go to running races and record the races. And all these huge TV production directors would be like, you are so talented. I couldn't even do this. I was 9, 10 years old recording these races. I guess then it was I realized that I actually do have something and I do have a potential to make it with content and to make it with YouTube. But it wasn’t performing good.”

Dan tried another platform.

“So I let that dream die down and I started livestreaming on Twitch full time,” he said. “I was doing six hours a day for three years. It was a lot of time. My whole life was streaming. I'd wake up, start streaming until midnight. I wouldn't see my family, I wouldn't see anybody. Once it's midnight, everybody's asleep, so I'll just be alone. That was definitely a lot of work, is very lonely.”

Dan then pivoted.

“I told myself that the ending of last year, this next year 2026 is I'm going to be focusing on YouTube,” he said. “I'm going to let this streaming thing slow down a little and really just chase my dream because YouTube was always my dream. So that's what I did. Over the past 12 years, it's just been a lot of switching between YouTube and streaming.”

Dan’s Welsh accent is barely perceptible.

“I was watching American YouTubers from so young,” he said. “My school, they'd be very strict on English. They wouldn't teach you English. They wouldn't let you speak English in the hallways. I mainly learned my English from YouTube and from other creators. Because I watched it from such a young age, it wasn't too bad for me.”

Dan cited an online influence on his content.

“The biggest for my whole career, my whole life has been Casey Neistat,” he said. “He's such a cool dude, just such an inspirational person and I feel like I relate a lot to him definitely. He taught me how to express my creativity through my content. I was just watching his YouTube videos and a lot of my shots, a lot of my videos were definitely inspired by him.”

Dan wants content creation to be his future.

“I would love to hit a million on YouTube,” he said. “A lot of people look at a million on YouTube like the new 100k on YouTube now. But I definitely want to hit a million on YouTube. I want to be able to succeed with YouTube and just make a change. I want to inspire people. I've done a few talks here at home about running. I would love to go to these schools and go to colleges and inspire other people with my story. If they have a dream of chasing with sports or if it's a dream of chasing with content or a business, I want to be able to inspire other people my age. I've been doing this my whole life and I want to help other kids, other people chase that dream and follow that dream, and eventually it should all work out.”

Dan’s family has been receptive to helping him with the videos.

“A lot of my family is like, let's go do this,” he said. “I'll help you out with your video, but I don't want to be on the video. And I'm like, okay. My dad doesn't care. I think he loves it. My brother, he loves it. My grandparents, they haven't told me no, so I guess they don't mind it too much. I didn’t tell much people that I even do YouTube. I didn't tell my family, my grandparents, they knew I was doing content, but they didn't know I was traveling for it and stuff. They had no idea. So once they realized that it was actually working out a lot, I was more confident to throw the camera in their face and show them on camera. It made them very happy seeing all the comments about them. It's nice introducing them to something new and something different that they're not used to.”

“It's nice for other people to see the family also. A lot of people who watch the videos don't have family… and sometimes watching them just makes  them a lot happier. I like knowing that I might be making one person more happy by showing my grandparents or my family.”

Dan also enjoys others seeing his family.

“It's nice for other people to see the family also,” he said. “A lot of people who watch the videos don't have family. I had a lot of that when I was streaming that were lonely and sometimes watching them just makes them a lot happier. So I like knowing that I might be making one person more happy by showing my grandparents or my family or whatever.”

Dan has a dream location to film someday.

“I would love to go to North Korea,” he said. “I would love to go and film a video at North Korea and spend some time there and really see what it's like there. I want the uncommon, the very mind-blowing places. I want to experience the different stuff and different cultures and I really want to show those off to the people around the world through YouTube.”

Dan likes to keep his feet moving.

“I run every day,” he said. “I've been running every day for 1,048 days now, today. I have the world record for that actually for the youngest street runner in the world. I run a lot. I'm in training at the moment. I have 140-mile race coming up at the end of summer. If I complete that, I'll be the youngest in the world to do that distance. It's hard when traveling in the time zones and especially running every day. That's what I didn't have when I did streaming is time for that. I didn't have time to go do these races on the evenings. I didn't have time to go and do a nice long run every day. But now with YouTube, it's so much more flexible. I don't have to sit in front of the camera for six to 10 hours a day. I don't have to sit in front of my computer all day.”

Dan also has sea legs.

“I like to do some sailing in the summer,” he said. “It's very fun. I want to get into golfing, but I'm not the best at that yet.”

Dan stays motivated to make content.

"For me, I just look at it as in I don't have to wake up at 7 o'clock in the morning and be in the office for 12 hours,” he said. “I get to do YouTube. I get to wake up and pick up a camera and film my life and get paid for it. I get to wake up and film a camera and make change, hopefully. And I get to see all these beautiful comments. It's the feedback that keeps me pushing. Some people a lot of the times will do a big paragraph in the bottom of the comments saying this video helped me so much in this way or I was having a terrible day today and you uploaded and I watched this video, and it made me very happy. Obviously some days, I don't feel like filming. After I got home from Florida, I don't think I uploaded for six days and I try go no more than two or three. So it's definitely hard to pick up the camera at times.”

Dan’s issue is finding something to film.

“I am motivated to film,” he said. “It's mostly what do I film, especially at home. That's my problem. It’s just making the video as fun as possible.”

Dan’s latest project was traveling Europe with no money.

“No money for food, no money for hotel, no money for nothing,” he said. “No money in Europe and go to different countries and meet new people.”

Dan didn’t have to overcome being shy in front of the lens.

“I've always in front of the camera, always loved the camera,” he said. “I always loved showing other people this life here is like that. As a kid, I stream for three hours and get one person in there. I love doing it.”

Dan doesn’t let online criticism, including that about his appearance, dissuade him.

“You get insecure here and there, but it's my dream to chase and I can't let being insecure stop that,” he said. “I can't change how I look. And that definitely won't change how I look at my dream and chase my dream.”

Dan dispensed advice to aspiring YouTubers.

“Stay consistent and be original,” he said. “But mostly, it's the consistency. It's so hard because you're stuck in that 100- to a 1,000-view range for so long. And as soon as you get started, you start getting good videos. I've had videos of 70,000, 50,000 views or whatever, and then the next video might be 10,000. Obviously 10,000 is so much still, but once you get used to that 50,000 range, you're like, oh, didn't hit 50,000, though, or it didn't hit 40,000. It only got 10,000. You can't get to that point. I don't look at the numbers anymore. I don't know how much views my videos get. So it's a good feeling once you get a good video, but don't get too used to it if it happens over and over again. Because once you get a bad video, it demotivates you a lot and definitely kills a lot of the inspiration, motivation to carry on. Be original, be consistent and don't get too confident. Let the video do what it's doing and just carry on.”

Dan’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@danpritchardd